Join us for an evening of Balkan, Romanian and Turkish Music with Çağıl Çokan and Andrew Cohen. We are excited to have Çağıl Çokan and her band for their debut at the bacchanal plus an opening solo accordionist set with Andrew Cohen of Spaga!
Show starts at 9 pm, doors open at 8 pm. Tickets: general: $20, students: $15. Cash or Venmo accepted at the door. All ages before 10 pm. 21+ after 10 pm when kitchen closes.
Turkish musician Çağıl Çokan (pronounced 'chah-ill cho-kahn') is a masterful flute player, vocalist and multi instrumentalist. After her studies at a classical music conservatory, she roamed around the world to share the music from her homeland Turkey among many other genres. She participated in and arranged jazz festivals in Brazil where she lived and performed for over ten years. Drummer, composer and singer Zion Ra has been mastering his drums since he was a child in a Haitian church where his mother was a priest. For him music is a way of devotion and never-ending learning process. Romo is a guitarist, singer and composer. He has lived in Spain and Brazil where he deepened his love for flamenco and samba music. His love for guitar started at a young age and developed into one of his greatest passions. He has been playing Turkish music with Çağıl Çokan for more than a decade.
Andrew Cohen is on a mission with the accordion. After experiencing an existential crisis common among classically trained musicians, he decided to pick up the instrument and hasn’t looked back. Andrew performed constantly for years as part of the rich Bay Area Balkan music scene, learning traditional folk music from Macedonia, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, and Turkey. After a time, Romanian Gypsy music, Muzica Lautareasca caught his attention. In 2019, after recording his album Californeasca featuring professional Romanian vocalist Ionela Guzic, Andrew was invited to study in Romania with master accordionist Ionica Minune, living for months with him, his wife, and their ten dogs in the village of Stefanestii-de-Jos. To date, Andrew is the first and only American musician to be given the opportunity to study with Ionica who is one of the national figures of Romania, and the experience has inspired him to bring this virtuosic and little-known music to an audience here in the US. Andrew has performed at many venues around California and the western US, and at festivals including Outside Lands and Symbiosis festival. Andrew has also studied for years with master musician Sergiu Popa, and has degrees in Music Education and Instrumental Performance from the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut. He currently runs a music school in San Francisco named Village Music and lives in Bolinas, California.